To love is to trust Because love is the most vulnerable feeling on earth To trust is to respect Because trust is the purest compliment that has worth To respect is to obligate Because respect indicates expectation of highest virtue To love is to trust is to respect is to obligate you to be the best you. Che Chidi Chukwumerije Poems from the inner river
respect
GET USED TO BLACK
Black is not a fad, and not a trend –
It was here first & it is here to stay ‘til the end.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
INTIMACY
How many people live in
Your household?
Just you and your partner and
Perhaps your children too?
Love children of all types.
Or do your friends too
Live with you there?
And have your parents and families too
Openly or secretly moved in and
Joined in your decision making?
And are strangers the ears of
Your intimacy?
And is the world with you in
Your privacy?
And yet you continue to wonder
What went wrong on the
Threshold to Paradise
And where did the intimate home go?
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
RIGIDIFICATION
Basically to do with respect – or the lack of it. A disrespect that has its roots in an unexamined, unquestioned presumption which a person has grown up with from childhood.
The presumption becomes the basis for all further interactions with and reflections upon the people or places to which the presumption applies. This presumption forms the bedrock of the basic attitudes the person develops towards the object of consideration. It stands like a wall in the face of a reappraisal of the people, object, situation or place; it is wielded as a weapon, held up as a shield in one’s dealings with them.
A common tendency towards lethargy might then prevent one from examining the presumption, which may also be called a prejudice. To examine the prejudice means facing the danger of encountering and acknowledging its incorrectness or partial incorrectness, and taking the trouble to build up a new view of and relationship with the discriminated – and thus making an about-face.
So it becomes a matter of pride. And, passed on from generation to generation, it will stand through the centuries like the Rock of Gibraltar, and no-one will know its beginning anymore.
Pride is a drug. It offers you comfort and succour, with gentle paws and steely claws that entrap what they embrace.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
INNER SHARING
Every friend
Takes a piece of you
But not all
Will give it back
From friendship to friendship
You lose more of you
And have to reinvent yourself
In the end
This is when
Your friends will tell you
That you have changed
And they don’t know you anymore
Only those
Who gave back what they took
Will understand you now
Because they were the soil
That yielded you.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
SPACE
Distance
Brought me closer to you than
Romance
Ever did or ever could
Distance
Is more intimate than nearness
Substance
Needs space to come together
Distance
Is at the heart of our closeness
Long live the resistance
That makes the current of love flow.
– CHE CHIDI CHUKWUMERIJE.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 